


after all these days

by atlantisairlock



Category: Bloomington (2010)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/F, Fix-It, Future Fic, Marriage Proposal, Nebraska, Reunion Sex, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 01:46:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5609218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlantisairlock/pseuds/atlantisairlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours."</p>
            </blockquote>





	after all these days

**Author's Note:**

> basically my answer to the crappy ending the movie gave us in canon. though i like pretend that the movie ended with catherine saying 'i love you' because it all went to shit after that. 
> 
> title from 'all too well' by taylor swift - i saw the song used for a cat x jackie fanvid and it broke my heart, absolutely great stuff.
> 
> summary is a quote from the hours (2002).

Jackie Kirk comes to her on a breathtakingly ordinary afternoon, with starshine lingering in her eyes and a blush on her cheeks, and leaves six months later with Catherine's heart in her hands. 

 

 

She knows, all too well, that it's her fault. Even with Hecht at the helm, her infamy would have caught up with her sooner or later, and what more with Jackie Kirk, the country's poster girl -

and she's the one who told her _I love you,_ and proceeded to fuck it all up during the party.

It's her fault, and Jackie is blameless, and yet when she looks out of that window, on her last day -

all she can think is _stay, stay, stay._

 

 

She is jeered and hounded out of the college, out of Bloomington, out of Indiana, and she leaves with her back straight and a grace that aches at her bones. 

Catherine makes an appointment at the shelter, packs the pieces of a shattered life into two Samsonite suitcases, and takes the first flight out to Nebraska. 

 _Why Nebraska?_ Jackie will ask, many, many years later, when memories of a library and a mixer and a dog named Ethan are but silhouettes in the fog.

Catherine will card her fingers through blonde hair and think of rolling hills, towering dunes, lightning across the windowpanes, and the certainty that her past will never touch her again. 

 

 

In the charming, quaint town of Buttfuck, Nowhere, Catherine gets hired to do what she does best - teach a bunch of rowdy kids how to pry into the minds of their peers, and re-evaluate their perception of the world around them.

In the charming, quaint town of Buttfuck, Nowhere, Catherine buys a one-story home with a patch of soil by the back gate and plants cyclamen, hyacinths, forget-me-nots. 

In the charming, quaint town of Buttfuck, Nowhere, Catherine attends her neighbour's Thanksgiving party and learns how to stuff a turkey while laughing at the resident carpenter's bad jokes.

In the charming, quaint town of Buttfuck, Nowhere - 

she lays down new floorboards and learns to rise above, rise again. 

 

 

She keeps the clunky old TV set in her living room on while she's cooking, most of the time. It makes for pleasant background noise, something to keep her thoughts occupied while she chops carrots and peels potatoes. 

The commercial begins with a tune that sounds appropriately upbeat, kid-friendly, and the voiceover chirps,  _welcome back to Neptune._

Catherine looks up to see Jackie on her screen, looking out at her with that precocious stare, hair a shade darker than she remembers it.

She puts the peeler down. 

 

 

 _Neptune 26_ finds its way into the only cinema within five miles of the town about two weeks after the commercial first airs. Catherine borrows her neighbour's battered E20, pumps it full of gas and drives out to see it. 

When she pays at the ticket counter, quarters and ones staining her fingers, her hands shake. The bored teenager sitting at the desk doesn't notice - just cracks his gum, counts the change and slides her ticket across with a flat yell of  _next!_

She doesn't stop trembling until she's in her seat, and the opening credits begin to roll. 

 

 

The movie is a typical kid flick, simple, jam-packed with action, ending on a cheesy-sweet note, but Jackie puts up a stellar performance that takes her breath away. 

She is every bit as beautiful as Catherine remembers her to be.

She stows the ticket away, into an old shoebox that she places on the mantle, and heads to the library. 

She comes home with a stack of clippings, pages from magazines dated three weeks back, and a heart full to bursting. 

 

 

She celebrates her first birthday after - the _incident,_  on her own, with nothing but a scotch in one hand and the radio playing Top 40 tunes. 

The land outside her front door is flat and stretches out further than the eye can see. 

Catherine thumbs the lip of her glass and idly thinks about flying. 

 

 

It gets harder to fit the lid on the shoebox after Jackie stars in a slew of box-office successes, each one raking in greater earnings than the last. 

 _Six Affairs,_ and Catherine tears a page out of the rag that lauds Jackie as the Next Big Thing.

A remake of  _Vertigo,_ and she's Judy Barton to the life.

 _The Gold Goodbye,_ and the press loves how versatile she is.

 _Wild Steps,_ and the picture flickers in and out but Catherine watches her take the stage at the Oscars.

The  _Last Bridge Chronicles: Mornings and The Voyage,_ and it's her first franchise, 'the first of many'. 

Each interview she watches, each article she reads, makes her heart grow inexplicably lighter.

By the time the  _Last Bridge Chronicles_ wraps up, Catherine thinks she could be healing. 

This is how she'll keep her, with black ink on thin paper and thirty-minute drives to the theatre. 

Catherine gets a puppy, and names her Nova. 

 

 

Jackie grows up.

Catherine grows old. 

 

 

She is two years shy of forty when Jackie smiles and preens her way through a Buzzfeed interview and drops a 'taking a break' bomb. 

Three days later, she evades the paparazzi, her team of impressively built bodyguards, and her manager, and disappears.

The media, predictably, goes nuts. The tabloids scream drugs, blackmail, a lover. 

From her corner of the world, Catherine clutches a ragged stuffed bunny to her chest and quells the hope that rattles beneath her ribcage.

 

 

Three weeks later she opens her front door to pick the newspaper off her porch and Jackie is standing there with a knapsack on one shoulder and socks that don't match. 

Catherine slams the door in her face.

 

 

She opens it again five seconds later, the apologies spilling out of her mouth, and they taste like chalk. 

Jackie smiles - a tired smile, but warm - and speaks.  _Can I come in?_

The door shuts, once more, behind her - and then they're kissing, Jackie's got her backed up against the wall, peeling plaster and all, her wrists pinned above her head, one knee parting her legs, their bodies pressed so close - 

Catherine comes twice in succession before Jackie leans her head against her shoulder and whispers, 

_I missed you so much._

Catherine smiles, dazed.

_You're stronger than I remembered._

Her laugh is - 

They kiss, again.

 

 

Later, the moonbeams filter through the blinds onto the hardwood floors, igniting a whirlwind of dust, and she catches her breath as Jackie traces patterns on her skin with her fingertips. 

 _Why did you come here,_ Catherine says, more a statement than a question, and Jackie's movements still.  _Don't talk now,_ she replies, getting up and bracketing Catherine's thighs with her own.  _Don't._

She presses a kiss to the valley between Catherine's breasts, and Catherine sighs, arching her back.  _Tomorrow._

 _Tomorrow,_ Jackie agrees, and Catherine leans upwards to kiss the bitterness in her voice away.

 

 

She awakens to the scent of coffee, maple syrup, bacon. 

_Making yourself at home?_

She keeps her tone light, and is rewarded with a smirk as Jackie slides two plates onto the dining table.  _Hey, is it my fault that I remember where you kept all your things?_

Electricity jolts down Catherine's spine, and she walks into the kitchen, puts an arm around Jackie's waist and brushes a light kiss against her neck. 

She doesn't expect Jackie to push back against her, to turn around with a look of ferocity in her eyes, lean her pliant against the counter, drop to her knees, open her mouth against the hot seam of Catherine's cunt. There's nothing shy about this, nothing like the girl she knew, once.

Something flutters at the base of her belly, the thought of Jackie all grown up, and Catherine wonders,  _when?_

Her mouth is wet and her eyes are sparkling when she stands once more, invades Catherine's space, puts her face inches from Catherine's.

_Did you miss me?_

Her smirk betrays her intentions, and Catherine knows she shouldn't fall into her trap, this girl - this  _woman_ \- putting off the inevitable. 

But she has never been able to say no to Jackie.

 _Always,_ she husks, and breakfast goes cold. 

 

 

They slip into a routine for a week - sex, breakfast, Catherine goes to work, comes home, sex, dinner, foreplay, sex, sleep, repeat. 

It's good, but it does nothing to seal the crevasse in her heart that just seems to be widening. 

It comes to a head when Jackie finds the shoebox. 

 _You were watching,_ she murmurs, sounding pleased, and Catherine drops the plate she's holding. 

 _Why did you come,_ she screams, and she swears the house shakes upon its foundations.  _Why the fuck did you come, Jackie, why the fuck did you abandon your career and drop off the radar and then come and knock on my front door, and bring me back to square one? All these years I've spent trying to move on past the only girl I ever fell in love with, and you turn up out of fucking nowhere and tell me you missed me, and now I'm fucked, Jackie, I'm fucked, like I was the day we met in Hecht's fucking office!_

She's out of breath by the time she peters off, and Jackie's eyes are watery as she gets to her feet and crosses the living room, lays her palm against the curve of Catherine's cheek.  _Tell me to leave and I will._

It's not a challenge, there is no anger in it, just - resignation, and despair wells up inside her, and she wonders if all the time in the world could have helped her be okay with a life without Jackie Kirk in it. 

_Tell me you would be better off without me and I'll go._

And the epiphany crests over Catherine - this girl is still so young, and coming here has always been a waiting game, an act of being ready for the other shoe to drop, and maybe, just maybe, Jackie has always been waiting for Catherine to tell her to fuck out of her life forever before she could even think of moving on.

She chokes back a sob.  _Stay,_ she says, and she's thirty years old again, looking out of the window of a house in Indiana, waiting for someone who'll never come home. 

Jackie blinks slowly, once, twice, again, before she finally kisses her, brief and chaste.  _Okay,_ she breathes,  _I will._

 

 

And she stays.

 

 

 _How does this story end?_ Jackie asks, over dinner one night.

 _However we want it to,_ she replies, and Jackie laughs, rich and warm and right.

 

 

She is thirty-eight years old and a psychology professor and a daughter, a sister, a lover, and she has been waiting for this all her life. 

She has to drive an hour over before she finds a jewellery store, let alone the perfect ring.

She has a litany of things she wants to say that amount to a minute-long speech, but then they're in the living room and she gets down on one knee and Jackie is crying, and her mind goes blank, so she goes with Plan B - 

_Jackie. I love you. Marry me._

_Oh my god,_ Jackie answers, and Catherine thinks,  _thank you, Neptune._

She finally says yes with a flurry of kisses and a smile that says  _I want you for the rest of my life._

Thirty-year-old Catherine nods at her from afar and says,  _you did good._

 

 

Jackie Kirk comes to her on a breathtakingly ordinary morning, with exhaustion lingering in her eyes and a knapsack on her back, and never leaves again.

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: playing fast & loose with many things, including but not limited to: movie timeline, animal shelter procedures, character ages, what kind of flowers can survive in the nebraskan climate, buttfuck nowhere, the neptune stuff.


End file.
